


00.01 Beginning’s End

by Raziel



Series: 00 The Time In Between [1]
Category: 19th Century CE RPF
Genre: Gen, Lord M - Freeform, Melbourne, Raziel - Freeform, Vicbourne, Victoria - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-09 04:18:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13473531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raziel/pseuds/Raziel
Summary: Takes place before Blurred Lines.





	00.01 Beginning’s End

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place before Blurred Lines.

**Melbourne**

  _I thought she understood._ Folly to believe a young woman not yet twenty years old, hot blooded by nature and with all the impetuosity of youth, would be content to remain single, celibate, in a chaste love affair with a man more than twice her age.  _But I wanted to believe that something beautiful could bloom in the wreckage of a life._

After he’d done his duty at Brocket Hall and turned her away, he saw the heartbreak in her eyes. Behind that, though, he should have recognized the ignition of something far more dangerous in any young woman, much less a Queen. Pride, lacerated pride, the humiliation of having bared her soul and given her heart, only to have it handed back. But he didn't recognize it then, blinded to tears by the raw wound he'd torn in her innocence, and by her courage. _It was her courage that struck me like a blow, the blazing courage of a young untrammeled heart. I knew of her affection but to see such courage, and I too much a coward to match it._ Duty, he’d told himself, only duty, but that wasn't true. What held him back was cowardice, dread of what the world would say, of his inability to protect her from the stains of his past, even fear of flying too close to the sun.

 _I believe they knew they could not wed._ He had to go to her, had to do what he could do salve the wounds he’d inflicted on this brave, glorious girl that he loved with all his heart.

She seemed to recover but before there had been an innocent, radiant adoration shining from her eyes when she looked at him, that had been as reviving as air and cool water, rejuvenating his tired spirit. Now there was a bright determined cheerfulness. But also a glass wall, impervious yet perfectly clear, something he could never manage to pierce no matter how clearly he saw her on the other side.

And then the cousins came.

**Victoria**

_He loves me, I know he does. He is my teacher, my guide, my strength. He must break down this barrier between us. Why is he so calm, so nonchalant? Does he in truth then not feel what I do? Have I humiliated myself for nothing, cast away the most precious friendship of my life with nothing in return?_

She was dizzied by the complexity of this strange adult thing. She was caught up in a game she didn't understand. Lord M was still there, he advised her, he amused her with his observations and reminiscences, yet he was just out of reach, so maddeningly out of reach. How could she, a Queen, be so impotent, so helpless to obtain the only thing she desired in the world? _How could I have gotten it all so wrong? I thought he felt the same. I can’t bear feeling this way. My thoughts are not my own, I have no peace and I feel as helpless as ever I did at Kensington, ignored and mocked by the grownups._

And then the cousins came.

**Melbourne**

He saw her determined bright charm with her handsome cousins. He watched as she openly pursued, played her nascent feminine wiles – those same wiles she had first tried on him – on the younger, the designated suitor. He watched because she wanted him to watch, demanded he stay at her side to witness the courtship that was tearing him apart. She was the Queen. He couldn't say no. _She's heartless. No, not heartless, Victoria was not cruel._ Could she not know how he felt, how it tortured him? He's shown her his true feelings far too often, how could she not know? _She knew, of course she knew, she had to know._ She raged to him about the young fool’s obstinacy, his criticism, his contempt for everything that made her so delightful. He felt anger on her behalf. _As though you want the match to succeed, you fool._ But perhaps it is less unbearable if a match is made with someone she almost despises. Perhaps it would be worse, to watch her fall openly in love with the brother, as full of charm and playfulness and wit as his brother was lacking. _A clockwork prince._

And then, like a bolt from the blue, the announcement. Cleaving what remained of his heart into pieces.

**Victoria**

_He_ does _love me but he said we can’t marry so we will do what so many others have done, what his own mother, the mother he idolized, had done. Now he will act.  And if he does not then he must understand that we can be together when I am a wife, as they tell me others do. If only he_ talks _to me, he will understand. This is not a love match, it is a marriage of convenience._ But although he was punctilious in his duties, he attended her each day, there was never an opening, he never invited confidences, he spoke in that infuriating drawing room manner.

_“How many more German princes are there hoping to grow fat on England’s public purse?”_

_“We cannot have Germans running the country.”_

Even Wellington had his doubts, raising the spectre of Catholicism to challenge her choice. What more would it take for him to finally see that he was not the worst option and end this charade? Did he truly then not have feelings strong enough to outweigh his scruples or were his scruples only a kindness to obfuscate the real truth, that he harbored no passion for a small plain girl who happened to wear a crown?

They spoke of infidelity. “ _I believe that comes after marriage_ ,” but said with such urbane detachment, that he clearly did not connect the subject to _opportunity_ , to her solution to their puzzle.

Victoria had never been unhappier and more confused in her life than she was in the months leading up to her wedding. If her understanding with Albert wasn’t the means to an end they both desired, then what was the point? _Could I have been wrong about everything I felt for Lord M, about that warm expression in his eyes?_ Even the feeling, the tingling sense of something almost tangible running between them, was absent.

**Melbourne**

He wore his old cloaking smile, pleasant, amused detachment, like fragile armor, all that remained to keep his soul from hemorrhaging out. He could scarcely tolerate the smug Prince, and the hostility between them simmered. The brother was amiable enough and sometimes it seemed he knew, recognized the deep stormy emotional waters in which they all swam. He sometimes betrayed an understanding bordering on sympathy, which only grated.

She was no longer his bright shining star, his endlessly interesting, interested girl. She was angry all the time, her words sharp, her tone waspish. To her attendants, her longsuffering mother, to him most of all. He didn’t know how he angered her or why, most often, but sometimes he did, sometimes he even nudged her into betraying herself. A sharp tongue and unguarded response was better than the glass wall between them. Only to the Prince was she charming, all smiles, ingratiating. It infuriated him that she had to exert herself so to win his rare smiles. _Would it be easier if she had a groom who adored her openly, who lavished affection on her?_ Then at least he could be assured of the worth of his sacrifice.

 _“Only a fool would turn you away, ma’am.”_ He replayed his words, his choice, endlessly, the scene, the look in her eyes, the damned rooks flying overhead. It was too late to change course, her heart was no longer his, the heart she'd placed in his hands.

He anticipated her wedding day the way an imprisoned man longs for release. It would be the condemned man’s release to the gallows, but at least it would free him from the torment of Purgatory.

**Victoria**

February 10, 1840

_Smile, and never let them know how hard it is to bear._

_This is the hardest thing I shall ever do_. Walking down the aisle of the Chapel Royal of St. James's Palace, trainbearers in her wake. Another ceremony, but without her Lord M looking on proudly, his eyes wet with tears, reassuring her with his presence, his smiles, his nod of approval. He was there of course, carrying the Sword of State before her, standing solemnly at the side as she said her vows but he never once looked _at_ her. So cold, so remote and proper, that damned sword in front of him as though he might use it at any moment. She bit her lip so it bled, to keep from shouting out _you can stop this, Lord M._ There was nothing for her to cling to, no sign that he understood and accepted the sacrifice she was making, the stratagem she’d devised so they could be together. There was only this stiff solemn boy to whom she would be wed for life, this boy who was gaining everything he wanted while she was left with nothing.

She wept through her vows, wept through her wedding behind her veil, wept as she processed out of the chapel and they thought it was right and proper, thought she wept from maidenly delight. She drank too much champagne at the wedding breakfast, and wept. They all smiled and nodded reassuringly, imagining she must still be overcome with – what? What on earth did they imagine when they looked at the weeping bride, the rigid withdrawn groom? Did the fools think they saw joy? Or did they not care, so long as she produced an heir?

When she summoned him, she thought then he might give a sign. His eyes were tender, hers red and wet with yet more tears. He held her hands, he leaned forward to kiss her chastely and she imagined then she saw the spark she was hoping for.

“You once told me that when I gave my heart I would give it without reservation…” How much more plainly could she say it? Why wouldn’t he _see_ and _know_? She thought, hoped, that the ineffable sadness in his eyes was for her and she wanted so much to blurt it out, to say _Now we can be together. I did this for us_. All he had to do was give some sign, say one word to tell her that he wanted her too.

Instead – _Goodbye, ma’am_ and it was as though her heart finally stopped. She went cold and thought _So this is what it feels like to die. I will never be warm, never laugh, never love again._

**Melbourne**

February 10, 1840

_Smile, and never let them know how hard it is to bear._

_This is the hardest thing I shall ever do_. Walking down the aisle of the Chapel Royal of St. James's Palace, bearing the Sword of State, he knew he was walking to his own execution. _It shouldn’t hurt this much, to break a heart that’s already been broken and mended so many times before_. Does the heart not grow scars? Doesn’t it become, if not impervious to pain, then at least less acutely sensitive, able to feel each laboring beat of agony? Caro’s public infidelities, the way she mocked his love, even his loyalty. Then, later, her decline, her suffering, watching the beautiful vital creature sicken and die. So much pain. His beloved mother carrying on with Byron through it all, with the man who had cuckolded and humiliated him, and in some ways, the betrayal of a mother worse than that of a wife. Augustus, wracked with seizures, nearly thirty long tortured years and yet, hearing him breathe his last was still excruciating, such a central part of his life snuffed out like a candle. All that should have hardened his heart, but instead it had left him vulnerable and all too eager to embrace a final chance at happiness. _You did this to yourself, man. How could you be such a fool as to fall in love with a young untried girl, that girl your Queen?_   How could he not? It had been inevitable, ordained from the first moment he knelt before her, from their first audience when he was left buffeted as if by a strong spring wind. _The Ides of March_. Mother had always said his birth on the Ides of March had given him a sensitive spirit, a heart too easily lacerated and subject to inexorable fate. No warning to beware could have altered this course. He could do nothing but adore her, this wild mercurial girl, this elemental force of nature that had swept into his life and would leave a bleak barren landscape behind.

When she summoned him, when he told her goodbye, he’d meant it. He would still be her Prime Minister but could no longer meet with her _tête-à-tête. Surely she wouldn’t expect that of him. Young she might be, even naïve, self-involved, but she knew his feelings and would not require him to abase himself by seeing her daily, knowing she was another man’s wife. Young women could be vain and selfish, but she was not cruel._ No, he would send the dispatch boxes with Tom Young and correspond by letter to answer any questions, address any issues. He would withdraw to Brocket for a time, numb himself, render his damnable heart insensate until he could function again with a modicum of sanity.

When Caro returned to him that last time, it was with a broken heart and desire to retreat from the world. She used strong spirits and taught him that opium was the last palliative of a tortured mind. He would learn from her example, give himself time to heal. That was what he needed, time. Time to forget the power of a pair of bright blue eyes, time to forget the effervescent joy that his Queen, his darling girl – an endearment that lived secretly in his heart – had brought into his life for a time. If life had taught him anything it was that all wounds, even the most grievous, healed with time.

**Victoria**

Their wedding trip to Windsor was a short one, only three days, but Victoria used it well. Albert, freed finally from the stern oversight of his father and uncle and his own precarious position, had proved to be a pleasant undemanding companion. Her heart was broken but she was too young and spirited to mope for long. Even his habit of taking vigorous exercise in the cold winter air proved invigorating. As they hiked through the woods, dogs bounding ahead, she began to plan. The pain in his eyes when they said goodbye had gone unnoticed at the time, so all-consuming was her own heartache, but she remembered it in retrospect. The stiffness of his face at the Chapel hadn’t completely masked his own unhappiness, or hidden the moisture pooling in his own green eyes. The beautiful chiseled features she so adored perhaps weren’t cold and unfeeling, but hiding torment. Victoria told herself that all was not lost, that if he loved her she could overcome all other obstacles, any scruples, any reluctance he might feel.

Time. She needed time, time to restore the natural rhythm of their interactions, to lighten his mood, to let him know that her feelings had not changed, that what she had done, she had done for him, for them. How to tell him, how to find the words to explain what she scarcely understood herself, would prove difficult but not impossible.

She couldn’t wait to return, so they could begin again.


End file.
